Taxi Splatter Splatter and the disappearing bass.

Another musical quote in the title. You tell me where this one is from.

All things are evocative of other times when you’ve lived a relatively long time and travelled a lot. Taxi’s whilst often worth their weight in gold can also provide terrifying experiences. Consequently they may come into other blogs as we go along.

This morning I am sat in the airport in Madrid and have been driven to the airport by a little, round, baldy, lane dodging driver. I got here perfectly safely but the combination of the drive and Madrid put a ‘Freyja’ experience into my head especially as I spent several hours yesterday with the guitar player in the band Belen de Benito.

‘Freyja’, for those of you who don’t know, was an absolutely crazy idea I had to put a band together of female instrumentalists from across Europe. In addition to the band we eventually ended up with we had the most fantastic organiser and administrator, Kerry Fletcher and later on a tour manager Dave Groom.

If we assume that most members of the band could sing, which they could, the focus was on female instrumentalists often hidden in other bands.

We had been booked to play in San Marino a little Italian principality. One of the administrative nightmares with Freyja were travel arrangements. Several people coming from different countries. The other factor was we couldn’t just arrive and play. We needed festivals to give us at least an extra day to rehearse together and get ourselves into top form for the concert. San Marino had complied beautifully and arranged for us to fly in two days early, sorted accommodation for us and rehearsal space too. Fab – more of that later.

First the journey. From what I remember of this one most of us were flying in but Dave had driven there with a mini bus as we were due to go on somewhere else for other concerts. He drove their with Jo May, our percussionist, so that she could have everything she needed for the concert and also he drove the CDs and my bass clarinet. This meant I was flying into Bologna airport on my own with the rest of my instruments.

It was an evening flight due to arrive in Bologna about 10pm and then there would be a two hour drive to San Marino. I was told there would be someone from the festival to meet me.

Well I stood in the airport and stood in the airport as the trails of passengers moving on began to diminish and then there was only me. Quite conspicuous with a huge case containing tenor sax, clarinet and whistles and a smaller case with the soprano . I had been calm for quite a while and then just started to feel annoyed. I know British punctuality can be an issue in other cultures and that it doesn’t hurt to let go of that a little bit but with two hours still ahead of me I was not keen on hanging on longer than necessary. Fortunately I knew Dave would already be in San Marino so I rang him….more than once. The first answers were reassuring me that the festival had promised that there would be someone there … then that there was …  and then apparently they couldn’t find me. As the only person standing there I can only imagine I had accidentally pulled my cloak of invisibility over me and all my cases and made myself totally inconspicuous. Other possible imagined scenarios – that he had been given the name Jo Freya but had not been told I was female. Jo in most other cultures is assumed to be male. Anyway – no one there!

In the end Dave managed to convince the festival that something had gone drastically wrong and they said get in a taxi.

Whilst the taxi driver looked like he relished the idea of a £90 fee (worth a lot more then) he wasn’t looking forward to the journey back on top of dropping me off.

So it was classic Italian driving – foot flat to the floor and in the fast lane of the autostrada. Most of it actually involved the front of our car sitting in the back seat of the car in front. That’s what it felt like. As I have always struggled with car sickness or motion sickness as it’s now called I usually look straight ahead which helps. Not this time. I resolutely looked out the side window watching the lights wizzing by and up at the stars and prayed a bit. It was not the most enjoyable journey of my life but we got there. Dave was waiting and the taxi was paid and I flopped into bed in my hotel room with a rehearsal due to start at 10am. That was when the fun began.

As everyone else had flown in we’d arranged to hire a double bass for our Hungarian double bass player Eva Vavrinecz. My bass clarinet had come from England in the van and I suppose we could have brought a double bass from there but it didn’t seem sensible to have one cooking through the journey there and back. Eva was understandably anxious about not having her own instrument to play.

We met up over breakfast. Lots of laughter and hugs and the jokes began about the double bass. Had anyone seen one? No. Off we went to the rehearsal space hoping it might be there. Was it there? No. Dave went running off the the festival organisers and we started a few things with poor Eva just having to listen.

Eventually Dave came back out of breath but saying they were bringing something. When they turned up they turned up with an electric bass guitar which as you know is not the same instrument at all. They said they couldn’t do anything about it now until after lunch when one would arrive but could Eva manage with the bass guitar until then. The poor woman had no choice. Despite never having played one she could work out the intervals and where to pluck it and plonked away through the morning rehearsal. we still managed to laugh and have a few jokes.

The other thing about San Marino we discovered is that they took the obligation to feed us very seriously and after several courses of a delicious Italian lunch most of us had to resort to triple espresso to even contemplate getting through the warm afternoon without dozing off.

Back we went to the rehearsal and jokes started again. ‘I bet they’ll bring one but it’ll have no strings’, says I. Never ever ever joke about theses things. The double bass was there in a case and sure enough…it had strings but they just weren’t on the double bass. It was brand new and had never been strung. Absolutely impossible to rely on an instrument that hadn’t had time to settle and had never been strung or played. Back it went to the hire company. A couple more hours went by and we had about 1.5 hours left of the rehearsal and it was the day before the concert. The men who arrived looked utterly stressed out and panting. ‘Great’, I said, ‘Thank you. At last we have the second double bass”. Sweating one of the men who could speak English said ‘No this is not the second, this is the third. The men were rushing so much with the second one that they damage it’s neck on the door frame on the way out of the music shop and had to leave it there and come with another one” I am not making this up..you couldn’t. The final and third bass was definitely old and played in because it had the most god awful rattle that was impossible to get rid off. Eventually Eva played the concert with that final double bass that had foam attached to either side with some string to stop the rattling. I cannot tell you how relived we were that she managed to play and we were very thankful that she kept her cool as did the rest of us and we still managed to have fun.

I seem to remember that after that Eva resolved never to travel without her own bass.

Photo Eva Vavrinecz 1996 Official ‘Freyja’ photo.

Freya made two Cds: ‘Freyja’ and ‘One Bathroom”